Khan and Dobbertin to Receive Service to Medicine & Community Award at Reunion

Two alumni will be recognized for achievement with the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s Service to Medicine & Community Award at Reunion 2013. The award is presented to alumni who have maintained a high standard of medical service and who have achieved an outstanding record of community service or assumed other significant responsibilities not directly related to medical practice.

The 2013 recipients of the award – Joyce M. Dobbertin, M.D.’98, and Omar Khan, M.D.’03 –will be honored at the “Celebration of Achievements – Legends and Leaders” awards and recognition event that will be held on Friday, May 31, 2013, at 5 p.m. in the Davis Auditorium in the Medical Education Center on Level 2 of the Fletcher Allen Health Care Ambulatory Care Center Campus.

Dobbertin, a family physician at Corner Medical Office at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) in St. Johnsbury, Vt., is celebrating her 15th reunion year. She has been a dedicated and active member of her local community. As a physician, she has been tireless in her involvement with patient care as well as the coming of age of medicine in regards to electronic health records, community outreach, and epitomizing what a “community doc” should be. She is the physician champion for the Vermont Blueprint at NVRH, Corner Medical helping with the design and implementation of the Blueprint in the Northeast Kingdom. Dobbertin was named Physician of the Year in 2012 by the Vermont Medical Society and Medical Director of the Year in 2008 by the Vermont Health Care Association. For the last several years, she has served as Volunteer Medical Director for two weeks each year at the Hillside Medical Clinic in Punta Gorda, Belize, and performed similar volunteer work in Kingston and throughout Jamaica. In addition, she served on the Board of Trustees of NVRH from 2007 to 2010.

Khan, who also holds a master’s in health science from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is medical director of Preventive Medicine & Community Health and director of the Global Health Residency Track at Delaware’s Christiana Care Health System. He also serves as chair of the Global Health Working Group of the Delaware Health Sciences Alliance and is section editor for global health for BMC Public Health, an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on the epidemiology of disease and the understanding of all aspects of public health. Khan has made extensive contributions in the realm of global and community health, including experience working with USAID and serving as faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and UVM. In addition to appointments at Christiana Care and Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, he holds faculty appointments as clinical associate professor with Drexel University’s College of Health Sciences and as clinical assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson Medical College, and UVM. A reviewer and editorial board member for a number of prestigious medical journals, he has authored or co-authored five books, including Megacities & Global Health (American Public Health Assoc., 2011), and more than 55 journal articles. He is a reviewer for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. In 2009 he was named a “Top Doc” by Philadelphia magazine.